Point-of-care (POC) environmental preparedness for a specific patient's medical condition has been little dealt with in the past. The study of the impact of the environment on a patient's health and subsequent deterioration of health is useful in carrying out real time (RT) survival analysis. Here by “exposure” we mean a patient's exposure to chemical or biological elements or suspended particles in the environment that are considered harmful to the specific patient and which are capable of causing degradation in the health condition of the patient.
There are two types of major categories of exposure and the proportional hazards experienced by a patient. In the first, the static case, health deterioration is caused mainly by the exposure to present environmental conditions; past exposure contributes very little in health deterioration. In the second case, the deterioration in health condition is gradual; and is due to, accumulation of effects due to past exposures to various environments.
The health monitoring condition thus needs to implement monitoring in real time and have the ability to record past exposure information. The real-time monitoring system is meant to deal with the static case exposure. In order to account for past exposure and thus the accumulation of exposure effects, a server must be used for storing health performance in the past.
A Micro Electro Mechanical System [MEMS] sensor that acts like a canary is described in our co-pending non-provisional application filed this same date entitled MEMS Barcode Device for Monitoring Medical systems at Point of Care, Attorney docket Number OX-005 US. A canary is a system or device that replicates the host system in terms of the failure mechanism and failure modes. However, the rate of degradation for the canary system is greater when compared to that of the host system, when subjected to the same environmental and operating conditions. This makes the canary fail ahead in time, thereby providing early warning of host system failure. What would thus be desirable is, to directly monitor the environment and condition of a patient in real time using “canary like” sensors.